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After Parkland, a New Surge in State Gun Control Laws

By MAGGIE ASTOR and
KARL RUSSELLDEC. 14, 2018

After the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February, Congress did not act. But state legislatures did, passing 69 gun control measures this year — more than any other year since the Newtown, Conn., massacre in 2012, and more than three times the number passed in 2017.

State gun laws enacted

70

After the

Parkland massacre

in Feb. 2018

60

After the

Newtown massacre

in Dec. 2012

50

Gun restrictions

tightened

40

30

20

10

Gun restrictions

loosened

0

’13

’15

’16

’17

’18

State gun laws enacted

70

After the Parkland

massacre in

Feb. 2018

60

After the Newtown

massacre in

Dec. 2012

50

Gun restrictions

tightened

40

30

20

10

Gun restrictions

loosened

0

’13

’15

’16

’17

’18

Note: Totals for 2015-18 are from the Giffords Law Center’s annual reports. The New York Times calculated the 2013 totals by identifying every gun bill passed that year and tallying the ones that fit into the categories Giffords tracks. A comparable 2014 total is not available.

According to an end-of-year report by the national advocacy group Giffords, provided to The New York Times before its publication this week, more than half of the states passed at least one gun control measure in 2018.

The report also found a decrease in measures enacted to expand access to firearms — a major change from the year after the Newtown shooting, when a surge in gun control laws was matched by a surge in gun rights expansions.

This year, legislators rejected about 90 percent of state-level bills backed by the National Rifle Association, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group created by Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire and former New York City mayor.

Data provided by the N.R.A. shows a similar overall trend this year, with gun control measures passed overtaking pro-gun measures for the first time in at least six years, though to a lesser extent than the Giffords data shows. The N.R.A. also said that nearly 200 gun control measures were rejected this year, but did not provide a list of specific legislation backing up their claims.

“Michael Bloomberg-funded gun control groups have invested unprecedented resources in their state lobbying and public relations efforts shifting the gun control battleground to the state level,” the N.R.A. said in a statement. (Mr. Bloomberg provides about a third of the budget of Everytown for Gun Safety, and does not fund the Giffords group.)

The N.R.A. added that it “continues to win legislative battles in state legislatures across America like the important self-defense legislation that was passed out of the Ohio legislature last week.”

People lit candles in February in Parkland, Fla., at a memorial outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 had died.Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

Seventeen students and staff members were killed in the Parkland attack, but it was certainly not the nation’s first mass shooting. It is, however, the first one that appears to have been a legislative turning point — a “tectonic shift,” in the words of Allison Anderman, who compiled the report as managing attorney at the Giffords Law Center.

“A lot of policies that we had been working on as a movement for years were pushed across the finish line because of Parkland,” Ms. Anderman said.

In large part, the shift this year is a product of a less visible turning point after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. In response to that massacre, activists founded the organizations that would become Giffords and Everytown for Gun Safety, which gradually built the infrastructure that the current movement has taken advantage of.

The laws were passed in both Republican- and Democrat-controlled state legislatures.

Gun laws passed in 2018

by states with legislatures controlled by:

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

44

20

Tightened restrictions

Tightened

9

Loosened restrictions

NONPARTISAN

(Nebraska)

SPLIT

2

3

Tightened

Tightened

Gun laws passed in 2018 by states with legislatures controlled by:

DEMOCRATS

SPLIT

NONPARTISAN

(Nebraska)

REPUBLICANS

20

44

Tightened restrictions

Tightened

9

Loosened restrictions

3

2

Tightened

Tightened

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by states with legislatures controlled by:

DEMOCRATS

SPLIT

NONPARTISAN

(Nebraska)

REPUBLICANS

20

44

Tightened restrictions

Tightened

9

Loosened restrictions

3

2

Tightened

Tightened

In the past, state laws were broken down roughly as you would expect, with stricter gun regulations in states controlled by Democrats and more permissive laws in states controlled by Republicans. That divide is still apparent, but the exceptions are increasing.

Democratic state legislatures passed more than twice as many gun restrictions as Republican legislatures this year, and Republican legislatures were the only ones to pass laws loosening restrictions.

Still, Republican chambers passed 18 gun control laws, and Nebraska — whose Legislature is conservative even though it is formally nonpartisan — passed another two. Republican governors also signed restrictions passed by Democratic legislatures in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Florida, New Jersey and Vermont have passed the most laws.

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by state legislatures

69 tightened restrictions

9 loosened restrictions

Wash.

Ore.

Idaho

S.D.

Wyo.

Iowa

Neb.

Utah

Calif.

Kan.

Okla.

La.

Hawaii

Vt.

Wis.

N.Y.

Mass.

R.I.

Conn.

Pa.

Ohio

N.J.

Ill.

W.Va.

Del.

Va.

Md.

Tenn.

Ga.

Fla.

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by state legislatures

9 loosened restrictions

69 tightened restrictions

Wash.

Vt.

Ore.

Wis.

Idaho

N.Y.

Mass.

S.D.

Wyo.

R.I.

Iowa

Conn.

Pa.

Neb.

Ohio

N.J.

Ill.

Utah

Calif.

W.Va.

Del.

Va.

Kan.

Md.

Tenn.

Okla.

Ga.

La.

Fla.

Hawaii

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by state legislatures

9 loosened restrictions

69 tightened restrictions

Wash.

Vt.

Ore.

Wis.

Idaho

N.Y.

Mass.

S.D.

Wyo.

R.I.

Iowa

Conn.

Pa.

Neb.

Ohio

N.J.

Utah

Ill.

Calif.

W.Va.

Del.

Va.

Kan.

Md.

Okla.

Tenn.

Ga.

La.

Fla.

Hawaii

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by state legislatures

9 loosened restrictions

69 tightened restrictions

Wash.

Vt.

Ore.

Wis.

Idaho

S.D.

N.Y.

Mass.

Wyo.

R.I.

Iowa

Conn.

Pa.

Neb.

Ohio

N.J.

Ill.

Utah

Calif.

W.Va.

Del.

Va.

Kan.

Md.

Okla.

Tenn.

Ga.

La.

Fla.

Hawaii

Gun laws enacted in 2018 by state legislatures

9 loosened restrictions

69 tightened restrictions

Wash.

Vt.

Ore.

Wis.

Idaho

S.D.

N.Y.

Mass.

Wyo.

R.I.

Iowa

Conn.

Neb.

Pa.

Ohio

N.J.

Ill.

Utah

Calif.

W.Va.

Del.

Va.

Kan.

Md.

Okla.

Tenn.

Ga.

La.

Fla.

Hawaii

More than half of the gun restrictions passed this year came in a post-Parkland flood in March and April, including omnibus bills in Florida and Vermont.

In many places, legislators said outright that the Parkland attack had motivated them to act. Nowhere was this clearer than in Florida, where the shooting took place. Legislators there named their omnibus bill the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, after the school where the shooting took place.

By the time the Parkland shooting happened, Moms Demand Action, the grass-roots arm of Everytown, had a chapter in every state and local groups in hundreds of communities. Nationally, the group’s volunteer numbers tripled in the months after the shooting, and those volunteers organized en masse in favor of gun restrictions and against permitless carry bills in Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia and other states. All of the permitless carry bills were defeated.

“There was this structure we had built that could take in all of that anger and heartbreak and make it into action and put it into passing laws,” Taylor Maxwell, a spokeswoman for Everytown, said in September.

A Moms Demand Actions rally outside the Minnesota House chamber, about a week after Parkland in February.Jim Mone/Associated Press

Another factor was strategic. Many people who wanted stricter gun laws despaired when Congress didn’t pass any after Sandy Hook. But it was precisely that inaction in Congress that prompted advocates to start focusing on state legislatures instead.

And in some states, a third front has opened up: ballot measures. In last month’s election, voters in Washington State approved an initiative that, among other things, expanded background checks, raised the minimum age to buy semiautomatic rifles, established a waiting period and mandated safe storage of guns.

Many of the restrictions passed this year are popular across the aisle. Polls show that public support for universal background checks is almost unanimous. Extreme risk protection laws, commonly known as red flag laws, are also very popular; they allow judges to order the confiscation of guns from people who family members or law enforcement believe pose an imminent threat. Such a law might have been able to prevent the Parkland massacre, whose perpetrator had been reported to the F.B.I. multiple times.

Bans on bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire almost as rapidly as machine guns, have enough bipartisan backing that the Trump administration plans to enact one at the national level.

Other measures — like banning certain types of guns, restricting concealed carry and capping magazine sizes — are more divisive, though many of them still have majority support in polls.

Most states have their legislative sessions in the first half of the year, and activists on both sides are gearing up for the next round.

Robin Lloyd, government affairs director at Giffords, said two areas of focus next year would be extreme risk protection laws and laws banning 3D-printed and other untraceable firearms.

Groups like the N.R.A. have been focusing on loosening restrictions on where guns can be carried — for instance, by allowing them in schools — and on letting people carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Sources: Giffords Law Center; Everytown for Gun Safety | Notes: Data reflects only measures that significantly affected public access to guns, not ones that made minor changes or affected small subsets of the population. Additionally, each measure is counted separately even if it was part of an omnibus bill, so in 2018, 69 significant measures were contained in 67 bills. For example, a bill in Vermont expanded background checks, increased the minimum age for gun purchases, and restricted bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.